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The Best Free Media Player for Windows 10/11

5 Best Free Media Players for Windows 10/11 Review

Posted by Kaylee Wood | Last update: May 13, 2021 | 5 Min Read

Still whining about that Windows Media Player has been shown the door of Windows 10/11 OS? Still pissed off that Windows Media center was no longer part of Windows? Don't be vexed, cuz the top 5 free media players for Windows 10/11 will be introduced in this article, you just need to take a deep look into this review and find out which Windows 10/11 media player is the best to manage and play your media files on your Microsoft Windows 10/11 PC.

Like Windows 8, no media player app comes with Windows 10 (except for iTunes and alternatives for Windows 10). It incorporates the separate X-Music Box and X-Video Box to support the latest entertainment option. But they got a lot of users complaining about the service and they aren't cheap.

The good news is, online media streaming solution can be relied on Netflix/Hulu and Movies Anywhere for Windows 10/11 that can centralize the far-flung streaming films and purchased movies. Whereas, local movie playback solution is still not as clear. Trying to find the best media player for Windows 10/11 besides Windows Media Player that is both versatile and free of charge? Let's jump right in!

Download Best Free Media Player for Windows 10/11

1. 5KPlayer - The Exclusive Cross-Screen Windows 10/11 Media Player.

As the newest media player for Windows 11/10 among the rest, 5KPlayer does come with a slew of most up-to-date features including playing 8K ultra HD movies on Windows 10/11 PC and iMac, hardware decoding 4K UHD videos, and stream media from Windows 10/11 smart TV or Mac. Yes, this versatile media player supports Apple's AirPlay technology and DLNA streaming which can stream media wirelessly instead of plugging a cable into your Windows 10/11 PC or tablets to beam your media files. It is also one of the top Windows 10/11 4K video players which is designed to become the best Windows Media Player for Windows alternative that allows you to free play anything at will.

5KPlayer
  • Play all video music format including AVI, MKV, HEVC, MP4, MOV, WMV, M2TS, FLV, MP3, AAC, OGG, WMA, etc on Windows 10/11.
  • Play multi region DVDs on Windows 10/11 despite that they are region coded DVDs or CSS encrypted DVDs including Sony DVDs and Disney DVDs.
  • Play 3D movies just as easy as playing general HD movies, this media player delivers spectacular 3D playback on Windows 10/11.
  • Play 360-degree videos on Windows 10/11, supporting both 180-degree SBS and T-B modes.

2. VLC Player – An Open Source Versatile Media Player for Windows 10/11.

As an open source media player for Windows 10/11 and other 10+ operate system, VLC is a highly portable multimedia player that plays various audio and video formats. Take a look at VLC Windows 10/11 new features, it plays MPEG-1,MPEG-2, MPEG-4,DivX, MP3, and OGG. Similar to 5KPlayer, VLC also plays DVDs, VCDs and more amazingly. Besides, this open-source media player supports stream media from the web. But the newest version is still unstable; sometimes you have to fix VLC not working and solve the audio delay problem in VLC. Lucikly, almost all of the common media fies can be digest easily by this kind of media player.

VLC Media Player

3. RealPlayer – A Cross-Platform Media Player for Windows 10/11, Mac OS X, Andorid.

This Windows 10/11 media player is compatible with numerous container file formats inclusing MP3, MP4, QuickTime file format (.mov, .qt), Windows Media format (.wma, wmv), and the proprietary RealAudio (.ra, .rm) and RealVideo (.rm, rv, rmvb) formats. Even though the video streaming sites RealPlayer downloader supports to download videos from are not as many as 5KPlayer does, it does get another extra score thanks to its convenient online video download function.

RealPlayer

4. KMPlayer – A Basic Media Player for Windows 10/11.

KMPlayer is another choice of Windows 10/11 media player. With KMPlayer, you are able to play any mainstream media files because this free media player has its own internal codec which makes it supports MPEG 1, MPEG 2, AAC, WMA, OGG, ect. And it also supports matrix function and normalized function as well when internal sound codec is being used. But regardless of KMPlayer bundleware, the most important feature that KMPlayer should really be working on if it wants to compete with the other Windows 10/11 media players is to play H.264/H.265 ultra high definition videos.

GOM Player HD

5. Media Player Classic – A Light-weight Windows 10/11 Media Player.

Media Player Classic is a light-weight media player for Windows 10/11. Looks like Windows Media Player from the appearance but added more bells and whistles. This Windows Media Player alternates has built-in codecs for MPEG-2 and LPCM, MP2, AC3 and like 5KPlayer, it supports DTS audio and it's also a full-fledged DVD player software on Windows 10/11. While the cons lie where it doesn't support as much as video format and only plays unprotected DVDs.

Media Player Classic